


Four Times Gawain Failed to Recognize Bertilak, and One Time He Didn’t

by furloughday



Category: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Politics, Alternate Universe - Spy, M/M, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 21:53:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/furloughday/pseuds/furloughday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gawain has difficulty recognizing the Green Knight past his varied identities. The Green Knight makes overtures.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Four Times Gawain Failed to Recognize Bertilak, and One Time He Didn’t

**Author's Note:**

  * For [irisbleufic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/irisbleufic/gifts).



> Section headings are lines from the translated poem.

**I**   
_He made no delaying, but went his way swiftly, and rode many a wild road, as I heard say in the book._

Gawain could not be called on to recognize his host as the man he‘d smote in the beheading game.  He only met him in a strange half-light, when the winter sun had set in the afternoon and the castle hall was lit low with torches.  Gawain was run haggard with the slow fear that ate at his gut, besides.

The road had been iced over with a hard crust, to here from Camelot, and the hooves of his steed had crunched into it while the wind had pressed them back.  It was some sort of providence which brought him here, to the castle at Hautdesert. Perhaps it was the faith of a desperate man, but the five points of the pentacle which he hung near his three-day bed took the edge off the storm which battered at the windows.

The lord of the land, Bertilak was his name, met Gawain in shadow. He offered up his challenge, and Gawain had never been one to refuse a knight’s geste.

The master of Hautdesert chanced the snowy flurries to catch deer, boar, and fox.  In the day Gawain ate, but the food tasted of nothing, as if his neck was already laid exposed at the Green Chapel.  When the lady threw herself upon his bed he denied her, just as he met Bertilak de Hautdesert with goodly kisses - once, twice, thrice ‘gainst the door.

It came down to a question of honor and the good faith by which he swore to follow through.

  
 **II**   
_On Gawain’s departure, some courtiers lament the fate, of Gawain whom they believe is certain to die._

“The unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable,” his gunsman quoted. “That’s what that Wilde fellow wrote in the papers.”

“Ridiculous notion!” Lord Bertrum said.  He adjusted his jackets and held out a hand to receive his second rifle.  “You watch me eat this fox. I could do.”

“Rather lean creatures, foxes,” the gunsman commented.  “And did I overhear correctly that you were out today on a man‘s bet?”

Lord Bertrum was one to boast and brag as only an honest man can. “I’ve got a guest staying in the grand house.  We met this year past at the Duke of Albion’s Christmas gathering, and I‘ve a mind to meet him blow for blow.”

“You didn’t challenge him, did you Lord Bertrum?” cried the gunsman. “I know how you’ve a sporting spirit, but that‘s not done.”

“Nothing wrong with the sporting spirit.”

“Not at all, but an insult cannot be borne by nobility.  It might well come to a stand-off.“

“It already has, it already has.  He bested me at cards not twelve months ago, and I cannot suffer him his victory.“

The men broke through the low bushes, Lord Bertrum’s dogs rushing on ahead to scent the fox.

“Mind you don‘t leave your guest unattended for long,” the gunsman told him.

“Speak your mind, my good man.”

“One does not leave one’s wife with an untested acquaintance,” the gunsman said.

“He wouldn’t dare,” Lord Bertrum said. “And if he did, why, then, this is the test itself.  By my troth, he is a man of valour.”

“Just the same,“ the gunsman said.  

Lord Bertrum hallooed loudly, then, and felled the fox with a hail of small shot to the head.

  
 **III**   
_Any man of such a hue -_

No way a giant like that was a part of the business, he was too conspicuous.

The man known only as Agent G pulled a tiny pair of binoculars from the belt at his waist.  He squinted through them and watched as his opponent loaded his weapons and then proceeded to forgo the very useful fire escape ladder in favor of entering Green Chapel and Co. through the glass front door.  Anyone could have seen the game he was playing at.

The note he had received he had caught alight along the coils of his electric stove top, and one year later exactly, Agent G was here in black catsuit with five-point throwing stars strapped at the hip.

He sighted along his sniper rifle, searching out his opponent for x marks the spot.  But when the man appeared in his viewfinder in the CEO’s office window at 1:23 minutes after the fact, judging by G’s time device, he did not pull the trigger.

Agent G could shoot him now, could fell him with a single hit, but the espion’s code, laughably chivalrous despite the lawlessness of their missions, kept him from it.  It was frowned upon, the grotesque physical breaking and disfigurement of one spy by another.

Night vision: ON.

Collusion could be the breaking of their careers, like an axe swung thrice at the neck. The man became visible in green, clear through the glass and bathed in limpid lime shades where he sat waiting on Agent G’s timely arrival.  

  
 **IV**   
_For though a man be merry in mind when he has well drunk, yet a year runs full swiftly, and the beginning but rarely matches the end._

Facebook Event Invite:  
Host: Bertie “the man” diLac  
When: March 17th, 2004  
What: St. Patty’s party at Hautdesert frat house, and all y‘all are invited.

“Did you kiss my girlfriend?”  The green beard was right up in G-Dog’s face, and the spittle was flying.  

“What?” G-Dog shouted over the music.  _What a bro_ , he thought, gulping from a red cup. He was knocked by someone’s elbow from behind, and he wiped off his face on his soccer jersey.  His shirt was soaked through with sweat, it made no difference.

“Did you kiss,” the guy bellowed, but G-Dog could still only just understand him over the bass.  “-my girlfriend?”

“Yeah, six times, brother,” G-Dog yelled, right into the guy’s ear.  He was jostled from behind again, and he pushed back just as hard, a good-natured bout of shoving.  Some dude elbowed him as he danced past.

“Did not!” the frat guy said.

“Did too, right before I kissed your mom!”

The guy looked like he might just believe him.  He stoked his beard, and his hand came away green, the food coloring wiping off on just about everything.

“Douche,“ he decided, impressed.  “But I like it. You looking to pledge?”

“Hell no.  I’m part of Kappa Alpha Mu, look at the fucking crest and jacket.  I‘m just here because some dude on facebook offered me a blow. I mean, no homo, but a guy can‘t pass that up.”

“That doesn’t mean what you think it means, man,” Bertie told him.  He thumped him once on the shoulder, and it hurt. “We’ve got a mock-up knight’s tournament out back in like an hour.  You can pick your weapons and everything.  Well, we‘ve only got a sword and an axe, but dude, you can use anything you want so long as you don‘t break it.”

  
 **V**  
 _Now was Sir Gawain ready, and he took his lance in hand, and bade them all Farewell, he deemed it had been for ever.  
_  
Twelve days running, and while the Democrats held the floor, let’s be real here, the Green Party would never take hold of anything.  And on top of that, it was New Years, and everyone wanted to get home, but politics broke for no man. Senate moved for a recess.  

“You know what your problem is?” The Senator of Vermont was saying as he held open the door to let the Senator of Connecticut enter first. “You claim to do no wrong, but you just stand by and let things happen.  That’s complicity through inaction, right there.”

Bertrand leaned back against the edge of his desk while Gavin loosened his collar and threw down a folder with the words _uixitque sancte ac satis religiose_ embossed in printer's gold on the cover.

“What business do you think we work in, B?” Gavin asked.  He rubbed a hand across the scar at his neck, a guilty tic, a tell.

“A guy doesn’t make out with someone‘s girlfriend-” the Senator of Vermont said.

“This is old news. It was only a couple of kisses, and to be fair, I didn’t know you guys were serious.  And she came on to me.”

“Ah, she was a shitty girlfriend anyway,” Bertrand conceded. “She gave away my best tie, after all.”  He looked pointedly at the stripe running down the Senator of Connecticut’s Armani shirt. Gavin, for his part, hid his remorse well.

“This tie is amazing,” he said, pressing a hand to the item in a subconscious attempt to both draw attention to it and hide it away for safekeeping. “It’s going to win me the election, I can feel it.”

“You’ve got a nick on your neck, just there, did you know?”

“Shaving,” he answered shortly even as the Senator of Vermont reached out to touch him there.  He flinched.

“This election,“ Bertrand said.  “‘An errand that he held for no jest,’ I see.”

“Referencing medieval literature at me won’t change my mind,” Gavin said, but his voice bespoke a certain affinity and the truth was clear.

“You can keep it, this allegorical belt,” Bertrand told him.  “But you’ve yet to return the other favors.”  
   
“I’d fain-” Gavin began, but then Bertrand pulled him close by the tie, saying, "A man of your word?"

The rest was history.


End file.
